Video Transcript:
Our next Ask the Doctor question is, “Dr. Melissa did not address the waking up to urinate,” related to another piece of content about sleeping and prostate health. “I am 70 years old and get up every night to use the bathroom.” So, thank you for asking this wonderful question.
Organs and Glands are Hyper Alert
What I want to talk about specifically at the age of 70 and sleep imbalances, particularly when we’re waking up to urinate, there are several things happening from a physiological perspective, meaning certain kind of mechanisms and organs and glands are functioning a little bit more… I’m not going to say effectively, but they’re more alert at night than we need them to be. For instance, you should not be getting up multiple times at night to urinate. If that’s occurring, there’s several things happening.
Why the Liver May Not Be Able to Rest During Sleep
The first thing that’s happening is the liver is not in a resting state. There’s a period of time between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM that the liver and other digestive processes go through a hibernative state. When that’s not occurring, it’s telling me there’s a lot of things going on.
The first thing that’s very common is for folks to have elevations in cortisol. A stress hormone that’s produced by the adrenals is called cortisol. Cortisol will spike at night, and that tends to be the main driver behind waking up at night and urinating. So, especially the need to urinate is what causes you to wake up. Sometimes people even have dreams like they’re urinating in their sleep, and that’s a body signal to wake up and urinate.
Inflammation Can Cause Cortisol Spikes
Now, if that’s happening, it’s telling us a lot of things are going on. There’s usually inflammation in the lower pelvic floor that might be related to bladder inflammation, as well as prostate inflammation for gentlemen.
For women that might be waking up in the middle of the night, it might be hormonally driven. It also might be related to inflammation in and around the bladder with interstitial cystitis, a particular type of inflammatory bladder condition that affects a lot of women.
For men that are waking up, especially in the age of 70s, so our 70 decade, it’s very common that the prostate gland is inflamed and is what is triggering the cortisol spike, and also triggering the need to urinate.
Deeper Details Help Determine More Specific Causes
So, I always ask follow-up questions. Specifically, when you get up and urinate, are you urinating fully? Do you feel like you’re emptying your bladder optimally? Do you feel like the flow is an optimal flow or is it a trickle? So, is it a fire hose, a stream, or a trickle? Those are going to tell us more about that potential source that’s causing you to wake up.
If you’re in the last 15 to 20 seconds of the urination and you’re getting a little bit of what we call inflammation or pain or irritation, it’s almost like a little burning sensation as the bladder is emptying, that is an indication that there’s pressure as the bladder’s emptying. There’s a little pressure and you’re feeling prostate inflammation. So, the prostate gland becomes a really important aspect of healing that’s required if we’re looking at frequent wake-ups to urinate at night.
Learn More About Prostate Health
I actually have a very specific prostate masterclass for gentlemen of all ages. I have some of my gentlemen in their early 40s that are dealing with prostate imbalance, elevations of PSA, benign prostatitis, all sorts of things, fungal infections to really intense lesions on the prostate. Sizes of the prostate that are causing the urethra to be constricted and limiting flow, all of those degrees of imbalance.
We need to zero in on inflammation factors, we need to look at nutritional imbalances, and then we need to zero in on cortisol, the stress hormone. A unique process in the male body where cortisol triggers a particular enzyme reaction, where the male body takes testosterone and converts it into estrogen, which tends to be the major root cause behind prostate inflammation.
So, if that’s something that’s occurring – so I don’t feel like I have all the information really answered this question fully and why I wanted to ask a few questions – but if you feel like that’s something that’s occurring, I’d recommend checking out my masterclass. It’s 60 minutes. You can take that and really, it’s a deep dive into addressing assorted root causes and imbalances of the prostate gland. But also, it’s something you want to address inflammation, you want to address the process flow of the bladder emptying, and you also want to address hormonal imbalances like elevations in cortisol and even elevations in estrogen.
Assess Dysfunctions in Organs, Glands, and Hormones
I hope that’s helpful. That probably isn’t necessarily the answer you wanted when it comes to sleeping. But as a naturopath, what I do is I go into a deep assessment of the root cause of imbalance. And so, if somebody’s waking up at night to urinate, I start to assess what organs and glands and hormonal dysfunctions are present that would cause that.
So, there’s often multiple things happening all at the same time that’s making it a more severe and challenging situation for you. So, I hope that’s helpful. Let us know if you need any additional resources or have any other questions specific to your condition. Thanks for asking the doctor.
Joint & Muscle Care is a revolutionary supplement that takes three of the strongest inflammation support agents in nature (frankincense, myrrh, and turmeric), and combines them in the same perfect union treasured by the ancients. Available in capsule form or as an essential oil blend called Magi-Complexx.
Video Transcript:
Today, I want to talk about one of the leading sources of men’s health angst, which is prostate imbalances, prostate inflammation, BPH, elevations in prostate testing, like PSAs, and even, potentially, biopsies that might have yielded a positive cancer diagnosis.
So overall, I want to share with you some ways to address prostate health, and specifically, I want to share with you, I actually have a guide that I have written for gentlemen, that is something you can grab, click on a link down below, which is my prostate fix guide. I also have a masterclass that’s available for all gentlemen to take to learn. It’s a deep-dive, a 60-minute deep-dive into understanding how to address prostate imbalances. So, let’s dig into some things that we need to address.
Prostate Anatomy
With any type of elevation in PSA marker, or a challenge with urine flow, or notice the frequency is there, or any type of irritation at the very end of urination, we’re dealing with an inflamed prostate gland. Now, what does that mean?
An inflamed prostate gland, essentially, is a combination of an accumulation of fluid, so we actually have kind of a swelling, if you will, in the gland and around the gland. In the middle of the gland is the urethra, the ureter. So, it’s like a donut, and in the middle is the process where we’re able to urinate. When that gland gets swollen, it swells on the outside, and it swells on the inside. So, that’s where we can get challenges with urine flow and imbalances throughout the day.
Is Excess Estrogen Causing Inflammation?
Now, the other thing that we’re dealing with in the prostate gland is that the prostate is highly receptive to excess estrogen. I talk more about this in my guide, and I’m digging further into it in my masterclass. But estrogen, for men, can be the leading source of inflammation. So, if we want to deal with estrogen accumulation in the male body, we need to do a few things. We need to lower overall inflammation in the body, and we do this through two ways. One, I love to supplement with Joint & Muscle Care (formerly Magi-Complexx capsules) for gentlemen. This is a very inflammation-reducing supplement. It’s a trio of herbals that are known to reduce inflammation in the body. They also help create the lymphatic process and the lymph flow that will clear a lot of inflammation in and around the prostate gland.
So turmeric, frankincense, and myrrh, these are very grounding. They’re very good for that lower pelvic region. This can help reduce some of the inflammation of that gland. So for gentlemen that may experience… what I see in a lot of my patients is a greater urination process at night. So generally, a gentleman will kind of get to bed, and then they go through two or three wake-ups where they have to urinate. But they’re not urinating fully, so they’re not emptying their bladder fully. Part of that is inflammatory. It’s also related to a particular stress hormone. That is something we’re going to address, too, but the Joint & Muscle Care (formerly Magi-Complexx) is something you could take at night. And so you could take it around dinner time. That’ll start to lower the inflammation levels and start to minimize that nighttime waking.
Support the Liver
Now, the second thing that we need to do is we need to address the liver. The liver is a key detox organ, and the liver is also important for estrogen metabolism. So supporting the liver by drinking dandelion tea or adding milk thistle liquid herbal drops to that dandelion tea mix is a very powerful way at detoxing the liver and supporting the estrogen metabolism, meaning the breakup of estrogens that’s going to eliminate through the bowel contents and move out through the colon and rectum. That’s really important. And so targeting the liver is a really important part of this whole inflammatory reduction process when it comes to prostate health.
Is Stress a Factor?
The third thing that we want to do is address stress. Stress management. And let’s talk about stress. It’s not so much like, “Oh. I’m thinking I’m stressed,” or … For a lot of my gentlemen, they’re retired, so they’re like, “I don’t have the work stress, but I have this physiological stressor.” We have an assortment of stressors. We can have chemical stressors. We can have environmental, like allergy, allergens, internal to the body, like food allergens, or external. We could be dealing with micro-toxins, mold exposure. We could be dealing with an overwhelm of heavy metal exposure from work environment or maybe lifestyle, like smokers or folks that were consuming tobacco.
We can also deal with the stressor hormone, which is called cortisol. Cortisol is a very inflammatory-related hormone that can cause a whole bunch of stress inside the body, and it ultimately leads to some of the inflammatory challenges the prostate gland experiences. So, stress management techniques, like meditation and yoga, are some of the most powerful, free, stress-reducing tools that you can use on a daily basis. For gentlemen, sometimes, also reducing stress might be exercising in a different way, so doing more of a cardiovascular-based exercise in a 30-minute window.
So, instead of working out for an hour or doing hardcore weights, the most impactful exercise would be 30 minutes. Maybe it’s getting on a rowing machine and doing rowing or swimming. Those are very powerful, full-body exercises that support cardiovascular health but minimize the cortisol production. So a lot of men who are working out and kind of really doing a lot of weight lifting and high impact, the HIIT exercises or CrossFit, sometimes, they’re triggering cortisol in a way that is negative to the prostate gland.
Mineral Deficiency Is Easily Fixed
Now, another thing that I like to address is adding a very powerful mineral that is often going to be in a deficient state in our body. And particularly in the male body, this mineral deficiency can lead to inflammatory conditions, not just in the prostate, but joints. You might notice gout or swelling in the feet and ankles, and you might also notice kind of holding fluid here in the midsection.
Magnesium is a really critical mineral for lowering the inflammatory levels in our body, and we have Magnesium 7. I love to recommend adding this powder, so you can break open the capsules. You can add this into a smoothie. You can add it into your tea or morning coffee. It’s really great to add in twice a day – in the morning and in the evening. That can be a powerful way to support your prostate gland.
So, these are some tips. If you’re interested in going even deeper into healing the prostate gland, addressing inflammation and these inflammatory markers, like an elevation in PSA levels, where maybe you’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer that’s being monitored or are dealing with, maybe, a catheter on a daily basis, I’m going to invite you into taking my Prostate Fix masterclass. We’ll walk away, after 60 minutes of this impactful class, you’ll walk away with some immediate resources, tactics, tips, and even a companion guide to impact your prostate gland in a positive way.
Joint & Muscle Care is a revolutionary supplement that takes three of the strongest inflammation support agents in nature (frankincense, myrrh, and turmeric), and combines them in the same perfect union treasured by the ancients. Available in capsule form or as an essential oil blend called Magi-Complexx.
